pen vape newbie -- real convection?

Hi all -- General e-pen landscape question. I'm a happy Arizer Solo user but I'm looking for something stealthier/more convenient, so am investigating pen-style vapes. I live in an MMJ state so concentrates are fine. It seems like the options are primarily:

- Vapes that do oils, which I think are generally PG or PEG suspensions, which seem slightly suspect
- Coil-style wax/shatter vapes, in which you put your material directly on a hot coil. Somehow this conduction method strikes me as less than optimal, in terms of approaching combustion

Are there other options? Am I making too much of the conduction thing? Thanks for any guidance

Pen style devices are not portable nails. While they all can be loaded very conservatively to produce pure vapor, nobody gets satisfying hits that way.

Pen style devices do not have enough energy to evenly heat a glob of cannabis oleoresin to its boiling point, the way hot nails do. Our favorite oleoresin is flammable, and pen vapes generate enough heat on the surface of the coil (ie the bottom of the glob of wax) to ignite the heated wax. The result is you get high, and in fact the mixture of smoke and vapor is very satisfying for someone switching over from combustion.

Devices modeled on electronic cigarettes use very similar hardware and often batteries identical to the pen style devices I shit on. But they work very differently. Oleoresin is delivered to the heated coil slowly and continuously throughout the duration of the hit. The oleoresin is diluted in PEG400 and delivered via passive wick. With this method, you do get clean hits of vapor. Each hit also tastes the same.

PG is absolutely safe and inert in the human body, more so than carrots, and certainly more so than our favorite oleoresin. There is a minuscule segment of the population that is allergic to it, same as with carrots and ganja. Like many allergies, sensitivity may develop over time.

PEG400 is proven safe for oral consumption, but the data on inhalation safety is lacking. Further, the only PEG400 sold that is truly inhalation grade is Dow Carbowax Sentry -- in 18gallon drums. No reseller - even those who use the USP moniker - will tell me WHERE they get their PEG400 from. Plain carbowax is food grade USP, probably but not certainly safe. Inhalation grade PG is plentiful but sucks as a base carrier liquid for us ganja fiends.

There is an alternative to pen style vapes, and that is dildo style vapes. My daily driver is the Hercules, portable enough for me. It is not stealth nor affordable like pen style vapes. But it is the closest to thing to carrying a torch and nail with you wherever you go. It vapes straight oleoresin and there is no combustion.

- Vapes that do oils, which I think are generally PG or PEG suspensions, which seem slightly suspect
- Coil-style wax/shatter vapes, in which you put your material directly on a hot coil. Somehow this conduction method strikes me as less than optimal, in terms of approaching combustion

Are there other options?

Click to expand...

Sure. First off lots of oil vapes do just fine with pure oil. Oil of the right type (clean, basically) will also feed well in Omicron carts so you can load half a gram or so at a crack and 'vape all day'. Several days or more, depending. They basically feed heated oil up a fiberglass wick into the center of the coil.

And there's Revolution/DART (if you can find them these days) that don't depend on physical contact with hot metal to do the good work. They heat mostly by radiation.

While hot coil vapes might combust herb, it's not going to happen with oils. Consider 'nails' are much hotter when the dab hits, but like a drop of water dancing across a hot fry pan, there's a layer of vapor between the oil and the metal, the temperature 'at the interface' is very near 400F and determined by the boiling point of the oil.

I personally have no issues with the hot metal, but if you are set on avoiding it, look into Revolution/DART?